How An Air Conditioner Works?

The mechanism in which an air conditioner and a refrigerator works is more or less similar, the only difference being, a refrigerator cools a small insulated space within the refrigerator whereas an air conditioner cools a bigger space like a room, a building or a whole business. Air conditioner uses chemicals that easily converts gas to liquids and vice versa and in fact, it is the chemical that helps in transferring the heat from inside of the room to the outside so that the room becomes cooler and comfortable. An air conditioner mainly has three components. They are the compressor, the condenser and the evaporator. The compressor and the condenser in most of the cases is located outside the home while the evaporator is located inside the house.

Now let us have a look at the working of an air conditioner. The main function of an air conditioner is to remove the heat from the house to the outside so that the interior space of the house is made cool and comfortable. It is done by blowing cold air into the room by drawing out hot air outside. The air is cooled by blowing it over a number of cold pipes known as the evaporator coil. In fact, to put it simply, the cooling happens in the same process as the cooling happens when water evaporates from human skin. The evaporator coil has a refrigerant known as Freon which changes from a liquid to a gas as it absorbs heat from the air. The refrigerant is then pumped outside the house into another coil where it loses the heat and again gets converted to liquid. The outside coil is called the condenser as the hot gaseous element gets condensed into a liquid there. The compressor of the air conditioning unit is used to pass the refrigerant from one coil to the other and it also changes the pressure of the refrigerant so that it changes to liquid or to gas at the appropriate coils.

The energy that is required to perform all these activities is supplied by the motor that in turn runs the compressor. Here it must be noted that an air conditioning unit gives a lot higher cooling energy than the energy used by the compressor. This becomes possible because the changing of the refrigerant from a liquid to a gas and back again allows the whole system to move lot more energy than the amount of energy used by the compressor.

Most of us enjoy the chilled and conditioned air emitted by our air conditioners. But the problem is we also need to pay a price for it. More the use of air conditioners higher is the instance of global warming because more energy will be used and so more carbon footprints on the globe. In addition to that higher use of air conditioners also mean higher electricity bills as well. Hence, it is recommended that we should keep the use of air conditioners under check and put it to use as and when required.